The club is a game for the Xbox360, the Playstation 3 and the PC. Basically what it is, is a racing third person shooter game. Now, don't be mislead by the wording in that like I originally was. At first, I thought this was going to be a vehicle combat game, but I was mislead and it's not. You're on foot with a gun, but you're usually put up against a clock or a swarm of enemy AI.
This game is made by Bizarre Creations; the creators of Geometry wars, PGR and Boom Boom Rocket.
There are three main types of game modes in The Club. There's Sprint, Time Attack and Stronghold.
Sprint: Trying to reach the end of the course without dying. In this game mode you don't worry about having to beat the clock but enemies are usually spread out so you're going to need to find the skulls which will add to your combo.
Time attack: There are two different mini time attack games. One is where you run laps around the buling either 2 or 3 times. Each time you kill an enemy you will gain three seconds. The other time attack is like sprint but if you run out of time before reaching the end you'll be blown up by micro explosives which have been planted inside of you. The +3 seconds for killing an enemy has also been added here.
Stronghold: There are also two mini types of this game. One is where there will be fewer enemies at a longer distance and the other game being a whole bunch really close up. You won't need to worry about dying in the game with fewer enemies because that one is fairly easy. The one with more enemies you're only realy challenge is to stay alive. You're combo will stay up becuase you're killing hordes of enemies the entire time.
Quoted from Wikipedia:
"The Club has a roster of eight playable characters, each of which have different attributes for speed, strength, and stamina.
The roster includes:
Dragov: A Russian convict who is rescued by The Club after attempting an escape across a Siberian tundra. He is the strongest of the competitors, but also the slowest.
Renwick: A former New York detective, who lost his job after repeated attempts to locate The Club, and continued the search on his own. He is fairly well balanced, with particular attention to speed.
Finn: A gambler whose debts landed him in trouble with the mob, and resulted in his Club membership. He is also well balanced, but with a little extra emphasis on stamina.
Seager: A Canadian extreme sports junkie, who joins The Club in search of that next high. He sacrifices strength for above average speed and stamina.
Kuro: A Japanese double agent posing as a Triad Society assassin. Kuro is among the fastest competitors in The Club.
Killen: An Australian man who survived through The Club once, only to be forced back when his daughter's life is threatened. Killen is well balanced, with an extra bump to strength.
Adjo: An African giant who seeks to redeem his violent past, but is ultimately forced to participate in the tournament. Adjo is also one of the strongest competitors in The Club.
Nemo: A psychopathic Englishman who only lives to kill. Nemo is extremely fast and quite strong, but has very low stamina. He was revealed to the son of the owner of The ClubThere are skulls and clocks in this game (depending which game type you're playing) and they'll add to your combo. After time you're combo starts to "bleed" and you're multiplier will slowly diminish. You can save your combo though by killing someone within a certain period of time."
The character roster found in The Club is actually quite diverse, and you can definitely feel a difference in each character's play style. If you're playing on a lower difficulty, it's best to pick Kuro for Sprint/Time Attack (as he's fastest and will fly through the levels), and Dragov for the more stationary levels. However, I found that playing on the highest difficulty, I could rarely beat a level as Kuro because he's got the lowest possible amount of health. This caused me to use Nemo a lot more, as he's a more balanced character.
Mutliplayer: There isn't anything speacial about the multiplayer in the club. It's got six relatively common game modes, and one that's game specific.
Quoted from Wikipedia:
- Kill Match: This is a tried and tested death-match mode. The player with the most kills at the end of the game is the winner.
- Score Match: This is a points based death match where players rack up points for kills using the same scoring mechanism which is used in the single player game. As with the single player game, the key to big scores is to combo.
- Hunted Killer: When the game begins the first player to make a kill becomes the Hunted. While hunted, a player’s score ticks up constantly. Only one player can be the hunted, and if a Hunter player manages to kill the hunted, the hunted status will pass over to the killer. Becoming the hunted and surviving for as long as possible is the only way to score. The hunters are equipped with radar which shows where the hunted player is all the time. The hunted player does not have a scanner so he must keep on his toes to avoid his pursuers.
- Team Kill Match: This is a regular team kill match. The team who scores the highest by killing their opponents will win.
- Team Capture: in this game mode, both teams have a base objective. The aim of the game mode is to capture the enemies’ base objective while defending your own. Bases are captured by standing on them and holding for 30 seconds. The team who manages to fully capture the enemy team’s objective or the team with the most capture time when the game timer runs out is the winner.
- Team Siege: This game mode is inspired by the single player “Siege” game mode. In Team Siege teams are assigned the role of either attack or defense.
- Defending players have only one life whereas attacking players re-spawn when killed. The game plays out and the attackers must kill all of the defending players as quickly as possible. The teams then swap roles so the attackers become defenders and the defenders attackers. To win this round teams must survive for longer in defense than the attackers did.
- Team Skull Shot: The aim of this game mode is to destroy all five of the enemy team’s skull shot targets while defending your own.
It's nothing to be excited for, nor a good reason to buy the game, as the multiplayer isn't very fun. It has spawn camping which reverts back to around the 1990s and anyone with a rocket launcher is almost always going to kill you.
This game has a really high learning curve. Easy-"Casual" is way to easy and anyone will be able to completely destroy the score you're going to need to reach. The score amount is usually no more than 60,000. Yet when you go to medium-"Reckless" it's completely amps up the difficulty and you're going to need to be getting at least 1 million points per round. You'll need to have played the course a few times and have a basic knowledge of where the enemies are going to be. There's also a hard and expert difficulty. Hard is you know the course really well and you've pretty much got the enemy placement memorised. Expert is you know exactly where each enemy is and you're going to be getting a headshot on each one. Also, you'll most likely have the skulls memorised too at this point.
A lot of people don't like this game. Most of them saying that "It's cool, it's just not really for me." The hardcore racing crowd is fairly small and also those racers are going to need to be able to have pin point aim. This game is really short (Approx: 3-4 hours) if you're only going to beat the 8 tournaments on casual and stop there. For me, this game will have endless replay-abillity because if you're like me, you're going to be trying to beat your old score over and over.
Pretty much, if you're relatively hardcore about perfecting a course, or if you're a high score junkie it's a thumbs up. If you're not really into racing games or you don't find it fun at all to be trying to beat your old scores and raise them, this will be a thumbs down for you because it's just not your type of game. If you can look past the minor flaws that The Club has in its execution, there is a lot of fun to be had.